But..But…The Grand-Prix Week-end!

Yep, boys ‘n’ girls, it seems the mayor Jerry Tremblay and many of corporate media are really scared of those protestors. They’re sullying Montreal’s reputation! They say. They can’t handle the fact that we are now on some American travel advisory.   One common refrain that sticks out in my mind is “But…but… the Grand-Prix week-end!”  That’s where we host some elite car racing event,  whose boss, Bernie Hecklestone, is a fascist (documented), anti-semitic, misogynist whose idol is Adolph Hitler and another British fascist from long ago.  An event only the richest can afford to attend and where local restauranteurs and hotel keepers often double, even double their prices. Yet, tax payers are on the hook for this event at every level of government: municipal, provincial, and yes, the feds love Hecklestone too. I mean, for Stevie spiteful, what’s not to love about ol’ Bernie Hecklestone? Actually, why aren’t more people protesting and/or boycotting this event?  Is it because most don’t know who he is?

I posted about Bernie Hecklestone and my disagreement for taking the damned event back in our city almost 3 years ago when I was still a rookie blogger over at Blogger.  I thought I would dust off the old post and repost it in its’ entirety here, with links and all.  Here goes:

If Michael Moore wanted to do a world version of his upcoming movie, Capitalism, A Love Story, he should focus on Bernie Ecclestone, the Hitler praising, anti-semetic, pro-totalitarian, misogynist who attempted to gouge Montreal one last time to have F1 here. Here’s capitalism at it’s worst: a billionaire being subsidized in part by taxpayers.

I honestly believed we would be done with Bernie Ecclestone & F1. As far as I was concerned, Abu-Dhabi could have them! More suited to champagne & caviar culture over there than here.

I never understood why Montreal taxpayers should be subsidizing an  event that they, themselves, can’t afford attending. It’s nothing more than a week-end playground for the rich & famous. A chance where hotels can gouge tourists for triple their going rates & filling restaurants alot of Montrealers don’t eat at for the most part. Furthermore Ecclestone just decides to pull out of Montreal in favour of Abu-Dhabi instead & the regular Montreal F1 event ended up in Istanbul.

Later, when Bernie Ecclestone praised Hitler & blamed Jews for the banking crisis, I thought Normand Legault, the local F1 promoter &  the City of Montreal would have breathed a collective sigh of relief: “Phew, aren’t we glad we distanced ourselves from this crackpot.” It seems I’m about to be proven wrong. Ol’ Bernie has come crawling back wanting to bring the F1 back here to our fair city apparently for close to less than 100M than what he insisted upon originally less this time around. My guess is that that the Turkish Grand Prix which was held on the week-end it was usually held in Montreal, didn’t yield as much to Bernie’s bottom line. It seems that the event in Istabul only attracted an audience of 30 000 spectators whereas our event usual attracts ten times that.

This time, Montreal should just say ‘NO’!! No matter how much the F1 boss was willing to slash his price tag.   I mean, hasn’t Montreal learned its’ lesson? Financial guarantees are in place, however La Presse also reported that assurances were given by Ecclestone that the agreement can be cancelled if the standards of Formula One are not maintained. Translation:  if Ol’ Bernie decides he’s not getting rich enough here, he will surely pull the race out again with Montreal begging him to keep the race here.

There is another reason we shouldn’t let ol’ Bernie &his little auto race come back here: his statements regarding Hitler and  blaming the Jews for the banking crisis:

Here are just some of his idiotic statements: about Hitler: “he got things done,” but “In the end he got lost, so he wasn’t a very good dictator.”

About blaming the Jews for the World Banking crisis: ‘It’s a pity they didn’t sort the banks out,’ he said. ‘ When asked to elaborate he countered: ‘ They have a lot of influence everywhere.’

He would later give some kind of feeble back handed apology later, adding like all good famous anti-semites caught with their pants down, that some of his best friends are Jewish. However, what’s worse is clearly he has no regrets for having made such statements.

There are other things about Ecclestone that would & should make any Canadian want to run this capatalist clown out of town:

His crazy views on Democracy: “The trouble with politicians and democracy is they all the time have to compromise, they can’t do what they want to do because there is somebody in opposition. It certainly takes a lot longer to do something,“

Of course, he also has a VERY high opinion of women: